A. Problem Analysis

1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?

One of the most important issue of modern public administrations is the transparency of the accountability and performance on data objectively oriented, other than the information’s diffusion to citizens to give them the opportunity to become more close to the institution. It is not easy today, both in developed and developing Countries, to manage accurate data on effective correspondence of public activities to high level principles on good governance and economy. We often listen debates on the different approach to data and divergent reconstructions on the real budgetary public sector situation, during the electoral campaign and after. There are several bad effects related to this gap on the welfare and transparency, with negative consequences on the quality of services, tax loyalty and democratic participation. There is also open space for corruption, which growth in the land of uncertain data. This is the real reason of the need of a correct analysis and diffusion of public administration performance. The rule of law provides the framework for transparent, responsive and accountable institutions. So, by building people's confidence in institutions, the rule of law promotes peaceful societies, as well as sustainable development. People do not, and cannot, have confidence in institutions that do not operate in a fair and transparent manner. Such new vision of the issue is at the base of the multistakeholder approach accordingly with the most considered exercises in anticorruption multilateral fora. The modern economic science enhances the crucial role of a legally oriented economic environment for better protecting all the subjective legal positions, including poorest and most vulnerable persons, with higher attention to human rights. For the promotion of the effective rule of law we need functional control instruments, based on mathematic and law, and also we need to inform citizens through data's diffusion given in a simple, objective and clear way. In one word the main idea of this project is to diffuse opportunities to the citizens on one side and on the other side we want to promote a Jurimteric approach to the accountability of the Public sector. In this context we believe that the fight against corruption can act as powerful driver for sustainable economic growth, employment, investor confidence, thus enabling a more concrete protection of human rights. This is an axiom now recognized for advanced, developing and underdeveloped economies. Summing up, we developed 1) The “Quotidiano della Pubblica Amministrazione” for national diffusion of all information collected, 2) Pitagora a model of accountability and budgetary screening of public administration performances to link citizens and governance at all levels and in all the moments of life. We believe that the initiative would be replicated at national level through future efforts for reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) foreseen by the 2030 U.N. Agenda for Sustainable Development which are going to add new substantial dimensions to the classical canons of legal formalism: they promote a "Rule of law" more adequately supporting human rights, the integrity of the territorial communities, social inclusion, specific public goods and public values.

B. Strategic Approach

2. What was the solution?

1. Establish a partnership between the Region of Basilicata and G.A.R.I. Foundation for the creation of the QPA and use of jurimetrics platform, so named Pitagora (see below), which open the way to show all entire public administration activities to all people and ensure an effective transparency in politics and governance; in other words, through Pitagora platform, political programs, regulatory decisions, strategies, guidelines, should be based on data as much as possible close to the objective reality;
2. through this kind of approach public sector became transparent as a glass house and strengthen citizen participation in all administration life; it simplifies the politics programs and; it simplifies the politics programs and proposals; it enables election campaigns on real issues of governance; it helps the transfer of powers between administrations; it allows the targeting of the worst performance situations without wasting energy as in traditional blanket scanning;
3. transparency and accountability give the decisive effort to ensure economic development, human rights protection, inclusive societies and 2030 SDGs achievement, allowing to optimize resources by looking at the areas of administration that have higher performance problem.

3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?

it is known that Italy is a country wuth complex bureaucracy and it is difficult to know the rules, circulars, judgments and acts products from the individual administrations and evaluate the work of the government. To help citizens understand the opportunities and applicable rules in a simple and direct way, we created two applications: 1) QPA 2) Pitagora.
The QPA It is a tool designed for the widest possible diffusion throughout the national territory of informations resulting from the analysis of legislation, produced at central and local level, case law, opportunities and all acts concerning the life of residents in Italian territory.
It is a drafting system in which the supply from institutional sources is made simple for subsequent analysis and processing that allow their understanding to anyone, regardless of the level of education.
All the produced informations are published on an online newspaper and made available for free, for embedding in websites of Institutions, P.A. and ordinary citizens.
The application named Pythagoras is a software tool that can analyze all the data of administrative transparency, of any entity, public or private, obliged to publish in compliance with the relevant legislation of the Legislative Decree n. 33/2013 and subsequent modifications.
The heart of Pythagoras is a probabilistic algorithm that can analyze the site of any interested entity and generate reports of immediate use to identify problems and deficiencies in respect to compliance with that provision.
The application analyzes the source code of all the pages related to the section 'Transparent Administration' accessible from the entity website, collects all the information of interest and through the analysis of some properties, acting on a probabilistic basis, establishes the fact that a content of the site is actually reported to Transparent Administration section or not.
With this algorithm, it is possible to know in real time the level of compliance with the standard of the body analyzed, with a percentage of reliability that is around 95%, through the timely display of related sections, empty or filled, and the possibility of direct access to these sections to verify the existence of the content.
In addition to the transparency data, Pythagoras is an objective mean to track the local authorities. The idea is to give a tool helping local administrators to figure out if the costs put in place are consistent with the average cost of comparable institutions, for each expense item.
Pythagoras analyzes all financial data of any local authority and generates statistics for the objective identification of consumer spending compared to other similar entities for population, characteristics and surface.
The system aggregates the budgetary data of the bodies provided by the Ministry of Economics and Finance (MEF) as open data, organized for captions and allows a quick reference and verification of discrepancies between actual spending and ideal spending of entity.
Each entity is added to a cluster, generated with probability sampling, which contains the comparable bodies and performs calculations on aggregated data to determine the average of comparability.
The system generates a report with a summary of the total spending data and by item, reporting for each row of the table the value of the authority's spending deviation from the average of the cluster membership.

C. Execution and Implementation

4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?

In a retrospective historical view, we register two distinct, if not opposing views about this thorny issue:
• the total reciprocal independence of mathematical and axiological sciences;
• the necessary joint interest of mechanistic and humanistic disciplines.
The total independence theory is grounded on the idea that research, in all its forms and purposes, should not be subject to any ab extra regulations.
The rule of law, in other words, may have obscurantist effects on human progress. This latter being only the result of the advancement of mechanistic disciplines.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
There must be an effort to promote a convergence of the said two visions leading to develop the maximum possible result out of them : the objective and mathematical background data must join the value choices.
Value choices will not be the result of proactively oriented evaluation of objective data, if not based only on rigorous mathematical results: here is the relief of jurimetrics as a solid support to politics.

5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?

By partnering with the Basilicata Region, la Gazzetta Amministrativa has built applications that have national coverage on the entire population of the Italian territory (about 60 million inhabitants).
The initiative was implemented by researchers and made available to the Basilicata Region. It is directed to the monitoring of any entity of any kind in the national public administration without territorial limits or number of population.
In a nutshell, it is a globalizible platform with a huge application scope and effectiveness, which can have impact on a whole State.
It allows territorial and by nature sectoral studies of entities.
Pitagora is a versatile tool, flexible and adaptable to administrative and legislative progress, while the QPA allows the diffusion of all knowledge produced through the integration of the application, as a widget, on any website.

6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?

1) Pitagora
Data with double source have been gathered coming both from the administrations concerned by the monitoring and from the central administration of the State, to be certain of the availability of objective and incontrovertible elements.
On the basis of a strict application of schemes of the administration science, a number of clusters has been listed where flowing mathematical data collected for each sector examined in administrative action.
The same sectors were sorted by subject and inserted into the platform in order to generate even charts and diagrams of user-friendly manner.
The instrument resulting from such data collection is easy and streamlined in consultation and updated according to monitoring procedures objective verifiable.
2) QPA
Editorial platform that automatically updates the integrated information in the sites of P.A. through the corresponding application integrated.
The initiative was realized using European Funds by the Basilicata Region.

7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?

Basilicata Region and the “Gazzetta Amministrativa della Repubblica italiana” (the Administrative Journal of the Italian Republic), a private organization of free services to public administrations and citizens. For years, it has worked for a legal and administrative literacy of citizenship, through a streamlined and incisive publishing on the main activities of the Italian Public Administration, as for instance the scientific magazine that bears the same name and the newspaper of the e-Government which is among the most widely read in Italy.

8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?

1. First of all, the Pitagora platform is based on an integrity-based approach which can shield the public system from reputational damages and induces renewed confidence, at all levels of government; it can spawn other advantages as well, like spurring tax loyalty and encouraging democratic participation;
2. Our program is built to promote a culture of public integrity by partnering with the private sector, professionals, academia and civil society.
3. Pitagora wants also to engage young generations also by strengthening civic education on public integrity. The benefits of anti-corruption awareness campaigns include commitment, reduced tolerance of corruption, low levels of integrity violations and youth mobilization to take a stand against corruption.
4. Pitagora enforces the transparency of public sector, strengthening the real chance to have an open accountability and budgetary system related to the employment of public resources.
5. Our platform may play an important role to affirm integrity values and standards in their interactions with the public sector also with simple communication channels.

9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?

In applying jurimetrics, we have encountered several cultural obstacles; there is a particular reluctance in public administration to be adequately balanced, framed and monitored by the surrounding contexts.
Public sector often receives similar methods and approaches as a land invasion: it is very difficult to win.
The 21st century heralds the promising dawn of an overall revision of the traditional, too much one-sided scheme of the administrative top-down approach.
Certainly the approach characterized as jurimetrics does not offer any social panaceas.
But, essentially, it involves putting a series of questions that are capable of investigating the test of investigation . It does not seek sudden revelations or universal laws, but slow accretion of tested information. Nonetheless, the immediate fallout is an increasing objectification of data and policy framework, not to be confused however with an ingenuous technocratic approach.
As a mediated result, linked to the democratic political process, co-decision schemes are going to spread: hence the active citizenship and values orient characteristics underpinning jurimetrics. Subjective perception indexes and other questionable data, perceived as an expression of substantive manipulation, are going to decrease.

D. Impact and Sustainability

10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?

Through Pitagora and QPA the famous distinction between “constitutional political orientation” and “majority political orientation” begins to acquire new and vivid life.
There are in fact core values, which we could reconnect to the basic constitutional framework, which cannot be instrumental to opposing visions. Among them we can recall: the rule of law, protection of human rights, the common good, etc…
They do not pertain to any single political vision.
Pitagora goes to the deep of high level principles on transparency and integrity.
The strategic gap in government programs must therefore be focused on assets and interests distinct from those core values which are super partes.
Jurimetrics offers the foundations for majority decisions, leaving untouched an overarching constitutional policy orientation.
When people has an objective and mathematic framework, the vision of the results of any administration are under the eyes of public opinion without filters.
In the same sense, every control or preventive measures can be settled to the real needs: the excellent needs assessment policy, in concrete related to Pitagora platform, ensure lot of income to the public budget.
No more useless activities are practicable in verify transparency.
This responds to the real needs of people, which want a functional public organization.

11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)

The initiative is, in actual Italian experience, the gold standard of accountability exercises, idealized for the local entities.
Is today possible to know, in real time the situation of every town, to have a snapshot of the situation in policy and governance.
The platform is actually extended to all the local entities in the Italian Republic.
The platform gives also ratings and classifications for micro and macro areas in real time.
Such added value of the initiative ensure especially to the poorest and most vulnerable communities an advanced protection system in achieving the 2030 SDGs, especially related to the 16th Goal.
As for the QPA it is currently about 2,000 organizations that use it as a comprehensive information tool on all the national territory.

12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)

It is in fact the real positive consequences of such program for the most vulnerable human rights and position.
Accordingly with the modern law best practices, the services in public sector are especially protected when it comes the framework of human rights.
The cluster list provided in Pitagora includes lot of indication especially dedicated to vulnerable peoples.